When I was given a semi-ultimatum "use AI or get fired" kind of thing for writing code I had a brief bout of depression/sadness. Whereas my friend doesn't care/says "I get paid to not work". I have gotten past it, now I'm just like, I'll do what I need to do to get paid since unfortunately I'm in a lot of debt so I need this job. I learned to code in 2013 so I like typing the code myself but now it seems like a waste of time. I still write my own code for myself/hardware hobby.

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SoftTalker 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you're anything like me, and you stay in a coding/dev/IC track for your career because you like the work, you will eventually hit a point where you start thinking it's all meaningless. This happened before AI for me, but AI certainly reinforces it.

You come to a point where you realize that you're not doing anything that creative, or nothing you haven't done hundreds of times before, maybe every few years you switch to whatever new tech stack has gotten popular, but it's fundamentally all the same. And you start to realize that everything you do has a lifespan of a few years, and then you (or probably someone else) will re-do it.

As retirement starts feeling like it is something that will happen sooner than later, you look back and see that almost nothing you've built is still in use, or will be for very long after you're gone.

I hope to retire in about two years. At that point, I plan to not be using any technology or computers in my life for a while, or as little as possible. Maybe at some point I'll rediscover some of the fun I used to have writing programs for myself, but I suspect I'll need a long break before that happens.

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sanderjd 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> maybe every few years you switch to whatever new tech stack has gotten popular, but it's fundamentally all the same

So true!

But it's interesting that, from the perspective of someone in the middle, neither near the beginning or end of my career, I am (now, after a period of sadness) experiencing AI as a reinvigoration of fun in the work. But it's a very different kind of fun. I had totally lost the fun of clean code and figuring out new technologies and approaches and abstractions, just like you describe.

But now I'm experiencing the joy of thinking about what I can build, now that it's so much faster and easier to try ideas. I think this is actually getting back to an earlier version of my joy with computers. I can (vaguely) remember in my early years being like "wow! cool! I can make stuff that shows up on a computer screen!". But then it turned out to be ... pretty damn hard to actually do that, which led me to more excitement about all the ideas and technologies and techniques for managing the complexity of software engineering. But then that started feeling more tedious and samey, but I still had to put lots of time into it, there wasn't any other option.

But now all that is so much easier, and I'm rediscovering the fun of "wow cool, I can make things!", but now also with the whole benefit of the time I have spent doing the work of software engineering.

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stvltvs 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>you look back and see that almost nothing you've built is still in use, or will be for very long after you're gone.

Software development has more in common with agriculture than architecture. The code always needs maintenance.

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busterarm 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I've definitely found what you're describing at bigger companies, but I also previously had experience writing software at smaller non-technology companies.

Legal marketing specifically. Weirdly, my work had more impact, respect and longevity there than the place where I'm a much more senior engineer supposedly directing the work of a whole organization of engineers. I had it better where I was a 1 of 2 than a leader among hundreds.

	▲	sanderjd 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Small successful companies are great, but the hardest thing for me psychologically has been when I'm at a small company that is struggling to convince anyone to use its product. Being a small cog in a giant machine serving lots of users is more satisfying (to me) than building things that nobody is using.

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sanderjd 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I was exactly this way ... maybe a year or so ago.

But honestly I've stopped being excited to type out code in my personal projects anymore either. I've become much more excited by what I can accomplish on my own in a small number of hours squeezed between work and family. I still experience this as a loss, but I'm no longer so sad about it, and moreso feel invigorated by the possibilities and opportunities that have been opened up.

A way that I have come to think about this is: I used to always be curious about the product management role. How exciting to come up with ideas and validate them with users. But I always demurred because it would be so frustrating to have to rely on other people to bring those ideas to fruition! On balance, I always preferred being the one executing ideas to being the one generating and validating them. But now I can properly do both things! (In my hobby time, that is, at work we still have this idea/execution split, at least for the time being.)

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halfmatthalfcat 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

FWIW, I was just like you but then completely gave in and found enjoyment in the act of simply ideating and shipping. The gap now between idea and implementation is so small. At first I was depressed but now I'm in the acceptance phase of grief. We aren't going back, for better or for worse.

	▲	falcor84 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What we're seeing now reminds me of that pub dialogue about running in Back to the Future 3, paraphrased: > Jeb: "If everybody's got one of these auto-whatsits, does anybody code anymore?" > Doc Brown: "Of course we code. But for recreation. For fun." > Jeb: "Code for fun? What the hell kind of fun is that?"

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ffsm8 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Heh, my employer kept pushing us to use Copilot. And over the last months the cli has actually gotten halfway decent... So I did start using it. Albeit sparingly because the token allotment was always pretty low.

Then they announced that they removed the limit/making further request just cost extra for them. That's when I started using it as I did for my personal projects I pay subscriptions for...

Then Copilot increased their pricing. Announced in April I think? But took effect this month. This Monday they announced that the limits are back in effect. So I guess I'll be going back to hand coding next week, as my tokens are about to run out ಥ ‿ ಥ

Corporate is always so silly. I mean I know how it happens: everyone just wants to get their bonus, so different management roles try to coerce the employees to do whatever best serves their bottomline - rarely related to whatever is good for the corporation... But it's always silly to live through it.

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mrweasel 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If I'm forced to do more work I don't enjoy, I expect to be compensated better. So now you have the cost of the AI and salary increase to deal with.